


my favorite "what if"

by Weissnichtwo (LoudenSwain713)



Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dmitry is a mess, F/M, Fluff, I mean it's canon compliant so not really but, Sad Ending, You'll see what I mean, for the most part anyway, when you make eye contact with your soulmate you see in color for the first time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24956236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoudenSwain713/pseuds/Weissnichtwo
Summary: Dmitry had a secret: he knew that the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova had not been killed along with the rest of her family. He knew that she was alive, even all these years later. She had to be; the colors she had caused to come into his life all those years ago hadn't faded, as they surely would have if she were dead. The only thing he didn't know was where she was.This is the story of how they find one another again.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry & Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway), Dimitri | Dmitry & Vlad Popov, Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	my favorite "what if"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hotaruyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotaruyy/gifts).



> Sincere thanks to the user hotaruyy, without whom this version of the fic would literally not exist. Go read her stuff if you can!

The summer day was hot, and the great procession of glittering fabrics and beautiful horses was breathtaking. But Dmitry had not come to watch the parade as most others his age had; he didn’t have the time to. He slunk between the coats of doctors and bakers and everyone in between, scanning for possible targets, but his goal was swept away the moment he caught sight of Anastasia, even more radiant than the portrait had made her out to be. He could not tear his gaze away from her, even as the crowd moved and chattered around him. Something in him screamed to get closer to the girl sitting so proud in the sunshine, and he obeyed. One did not get very far on the street without listening to their instincts. So he ran, dodging past the guards, yelling her name like it was the only thing he had ever learned how to say. For a moment her name hung heavy in the air between them, and Dmitry was seized with a fear that he had abandoned his task for nothing. But then she turned. He noticed the smile before anything else: it was quivering at the edges, as if she was trying to keep a straight face. His eyes trailed up her face, noting the shallow dimple on her left cheek, the scattering of freckles across her nose, until, finally, they landed on the sparkling gleam of her irises. And then the world lit with color.

Dmitry's eyes grew wide, his voice was ripped away from him, and he found himself breathless. He could feel the guards behind him and knew they were about to drag him away, so he did the only thing he could think of. He bowed, low and long, until he was yanked upwards by the guards and shoved roughly back into the crowd. When his eyes found Anastasia again, one of her older sisters was tugging her back from the side of the carriage they were riding in, and she was no longer looking at him. She couldn't, not with the grip the other girl had on her. 

Dmitry's heart was pounding, skin flushed and pulse racing. The _Grand Duchess Anastasia_ was his _soulmate_. Then reality set back in, and he swallowed. His soulmate belonged to the very family that had condemned his father to katorga and, ultimately, to death. Because of them, he was parentless. Even if that weren’t the case, the Romanovs lived in a bubble of superiority; Dmitry would never be able to touch her, never be able to see her again if his life kept on as it was. Still, she was rather beautiful, and the way she’d smiled at him, how those pearls around her neck had glittered in the sunlight…

His eyes stung, but whether that was from the anger, disappointment, or sweat he didn’t know. Regardless, they were eyes that could see color now. Just because of that, he would find some way to thank her one day. But in the present, his stomach was growling, and he reached up to dry his eyes. It was time to get back to work. The boy turned away, disappearing into the crowd and turning up sometime later with a decent array of goods: various coins, a few sticky sweets, a couple trinkets that could be sold. It would last him a few days.

He did not see that, just before the procession turned to the next street, Anastasia twisted away from Olga and cast her gaze desperately over the crowd to find him. The sun was in her eyes now, blinding, but the girl squinted against it anyway. She, of course, found nothing.

* * *

It was nearly a decade later, the next time he truly thought about Anastasia. She had always been a backdrop to his life, obviously: he was Russian, and she was his princess. The spires of her palace always towered above his head as he walked down the alleyways of St. Petersburg. The very suggestion of her, young and bright and utterly unreachable, was usually enough to send him into a rage. It was her fault, her family's fault, that he was an orphan condemned to living on the streets. But then sometimes a colorful piece of cloth or the soft hues of sunset or the pastel of a daisy would catch his eye, and he would forget his anger for a moment. Because of her, he could see these beautiful flavors of life; sometimes, that was enough to forgive her.

And then the Tsar abdicated his throne, the Bolsheviks took over, and the Romanovs were dead. There was no more time to forgive her, no more time to find her. Except…

Except, the colors didn't fade. Not after the news of their execution broke, not in the frantic, desperate days that followed, and not nine years later as he stared across the table at the bedraggled, if cheerful, remains of a Russian aristocrat. 

"So, _Vlad_ ," Dmitry drawled, the name sticking in his mouth for a long moment, rolling around on his tongue. "What do you want?" He wouldn't admit the unease that had settled thick on his shoulders. The older man looked just like the type to take what he wanted, crafty and shifty and a good deal larger than his own thin frame. If this Vlad wanted _him_ , well. Dmitry wasn't fool enough to pretend he could fight him off. Still, he smiled, ramping up the well-rehearsed image of a carefree, arrogant street rat to ten. The performance worked well enough to get his customers to underestimate him. Usually.

The man in front of him ran a hand through his thinning hair. Vlad was thinning all over, really. This new city of Leningrad was even harsher than the old St. Petersburg had been, and Dmitry felt a stab of unwelcome sympathy. "I've heard from some that you are the man to go to if one wants something found."

Dmitry leaned back. Vlad's subtle request was not very unusual. Many came to him to procure “lost” possessions, and Dmitry had become quite good at finding things - and people. "I might be. I might not." He shrugged. "Depends on what you want." Strapped underneath the table, just above where his right hand rested on his knee, was a knife. His fingers reached up to nudge the handle, but he didn't remove it, not yet.

Vlad eyed him carefully before speaking. "I ran a con, before the revolution. A very successful con, I must say. Unfortunately, that con made me a target of the revolution. I need a partner, someone to watch my back. And someone to find our next…" the man smiled, all teeth. Dmitry resisted the urge to shudder; he had encountered many unsavory characters in the nearly three decades that he'd been on this planet, and Vlad seemed no more dangerous than any of the others. "Victims," he finished.

Dmitry raised an eyebrow and, against his conscious will, leant forward. The hand resting on his knife withdrew and joined his left on the top of the table. "And what do I get out of this, hmm?"

The man grinned, sharp and amused. "What do you know of the princess Anastasia?"

Dmitry froze. His shoulders tightened. “She’s dead, along with the rest of her family.” Alarm bells were ringing, thunderous and unrelenting, in his mind; he was almost dizzy from the noise of it. Still, he swallowed and forced himself to relax. “What does it matter?”

If his voice had been too sharp, Vlad made no indication of his notice. “Former Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna is offering a reward for the safe return of her granddaughter.” The man smiled, eyes glinting in the soft light of the room.

Dmitry couldn’t keep the confusion out of his voice; it seemed his carefully carefree facade had been stripped from him almost entirely. “You would have me...find Anastasia, and take her all the way to Paris?” This was certainly better than what he’d been envisioning, and Dmitry couldn’t deny the urge to return his soulmate to her family, even if she would not be with him. But Anastasia had been missing for nearly a decade, and there had been no leads. Not for lack of trying on his part; in the months following the execution, he had spent his nights dodging soldiers and hopping trains, crisscrossing Russia in a foolish endeavor to find the lost princess. He’d found nothing, not even a whisper of Anastasia, though the colors stayed bright and vibrant through the years. There was some consolation in that, at least.

Vlad laughed, a sort of braying sound that wasn’t very pleasant to listen to. “My dear boy, the Grand Duchess is _dead_. But that doesn’t matter. None of it matters if we just find the right girl!”

His head felt slow and very heavy, as if the gears inside had not been oiled for decades. “...the right girl?”

For the first time since they’d begun the conversation, Vlad’s mirthful demeanor slipped into something much more serious. “Dmitry, we have an opportunity here. A girl no one has seen in a decade but everyone believes is alive, riches beyond imagining. We’ll be heroes! We just have to find a girl to play the part, and we’ll be on our way to Paris!”

The gears clunked steadily, slowly on. “We...would get someone to pretend to be Anastasia?”

The gleam was back in Vlad’s eye. “Yes! With my knowledge of the court and your...unique skills, we would be able to teach her in no time at all! Then we go to Paris and deliver her to her grandmother, the Dowager Empress. Have you not heard talk of this around the city?”

Dmitry shook his head mutely. Truthfully, he tried to keep as far away from any rumors of the royal family as he could; he never knew if the topic of Anastasia would bring rage or indescribable sorrow, so it was better to just keep his distance. Just now, it was bringing anger, though not in the usual way. He swallowed, trying to find his voice and quash down the indignation brewing inside him. Vlad was still much larger than him. In his calmest, most placating tone, Dmitry stared head-on at the other man.“No. I can’t help you. I won’t.” 

If Marie Feodorovna was appeased with an imposter, Anastasia might never be found. Some woman that came from nothing and thought she deserved everything would take her place, and his soulmate would be cast aside. She would never be safe. Yes, it had been nine years, but maybe...maybe Anastasia was just taking her time on her way to Paris. He wouldn’t betray her like that, he _wouldn’t_. 

Vlad looked genuinely shocked, jaw dropping almost comically. “No? Dmitry, what about the riches?”

That gave him pause. He hated to say it, but it did. He’d never claimed to be perfect, after all. “Riches?”

Vlad chuckled. “The Dowager Empress is offering hundreds of thousands rubles’ worth for the safe return of her granddaughter. I’ll bet that’s more money than you’ve ever even thought of, isn’t it?”

It was. Very much so. Just the image of it, wealth, warm clothes, wine, made his mouth water. Dmitry sighed, bowing his head slightly. “Okay. So...we find someone to play Anastasia, teach her, manage to get out of Petersburg, out of Russia, get to Paris, then collect the money? Is that all?”

“Yes, exactly! Now, do we have a deal?” Vlad looked at him, barely-hidden apprehension written across his face.

Dmitry ground his teeth together as he nodded, but he extended his arm across the table. As he shook Vlad’s hand, his gut churned with something approaching guilt. He pushed it out of his mind.

* * *

The scream ripped into the tranquil Parisian night, and Dmitry was jumping out of bed almost before he realized what had happened. His feet carried him, unthinkingly, to Anya’s room where the woman was cowering against the wall, doubled over. Sobs echoed around the dark hotel room.

“Anya?” he called, voice rising with a worry he would admit to no one.

“The voices keep coming back! Why won’t they leave me alone?” She turned to him, her expression lost and strung out, tears glinting off her cheeks.

At the sight of it, his hands hovered awkwardly, almost reaching out to comfort. But he didn’t: touching her now might just scare her further. “That’s all they are: voices. It was just a nightmare.” In the back of his mind, cogs turned. Voices? Could these be memories from her life before, resurfacing during her sleep? He pushed the questions back for now; he could ask her in the morning, when she was more collected.

“Stay with me, Dmitry.” Her arms reached for something to steady herself, and Dmitry obliged. He guided her gingerly to sit back on her bed. “I’m frightened.” The words trembled as she spoke them, and her breathing was quick, on the verge of hyperventilation.

Dmitry twisted his head to look for a solution. As he searched, his hand hung, undecided, in the space between them. He spotted a throw blanket spread at the end of the bed and leaned back to get it, draping it gently over Anya’s shoulders. “Is that...better?” he asked, not quite able to keep the anxiety out of his voice.

Anya smiled a little in thanks, but her expression quickly shuttered. Her head lifted to look at him, suddenly, and any trace of calm, however brief it may have been, was gone. “Who do you think I am, Dmitry?”

He couldn’t help but recoil from the question, just slightly. His hand, which had been resting on the sheets, retreated to his thigh. He took a deep breath; when it was let out, he still didn’t know quite what he was going to say when he opened his mouth. “If I were the Dowager Empress, I would want you to be Anastasia.”

“You would?” The smile was back now, flickering at the edge of her lips.

His tongue was thick and almost choking in his mouth as he struggled to push the words out. “I would want her to be a beautiful, strong, intelligent young woman.”

Anya’s eyes widened, blushing. “Is that what you think I am?”

“It’s what you’ve become,” he responded, with no hint of insincerity or hesitation to be found.

“Thank you,” she said, voice soft and filled with a little wonder.

“You’re welcome.” At some point, they’d drifted closer together, legs pressed against each other through the fabric of their pajamas, his fingers skimming hers. When he realized their positions, Dmitry jerked back, a blush high on his cheeks. He looked away, clearing his throat and shifting to the other end of the bed.

Awkward silence lingered between them like static, Dmitry’s gaze trained on a spot on the opposite wall: a spot far away from Anya. He heard her draw a breath, and he tensed, ready to be thrown out of the room. “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to pay me a compliment,” she murmured, a glimmer of teasing in her voice.

Her words startled a laugh out of him, and he turned back towards her to see that same humor reflected in her eyes. He bit his tongue and waited for her to continue, less sure now of her intentions.

A breath, and he watched as her fingers played with the edge of the blanket draped around her. “Do you really think I might be her?” she asked, the nervous, scared girl he’d found crying a few minutes ago having made a return. 

At the step backwards, Dmitry wished with fierce clarity for this conversation to be over. He wanted the Anya he’d met weeks ago in St. Petersburg: feisty and loud and almost too optimistic. That Anya he knew how to interact with, but the woman in front of him now? He had no clue what to do with himself when he was in front of her. Maybe that was why he didn’t check his words carefully before he spoke them: “I want to believe you’re the little girl I saw once many years ago.” Almost before he’d finished speaking, he wanted to take the words back. Anya wasn’t Anastasia; she wasn’t his soulmate. Sure, he’d entertained the idea a few times: moments of weakness on the journey from Petersburg to Paris. But they were nothing more than a fantasy, a child’s wish to no longer be alone. It was foolish and misguided; Dmitry had not been a child for a long, long time.

“I…I don’t understand.” The confusion on her face was obvious, it could not have been more genuine if she tried, but it stung anyway. 

He chuckled, more of a wheeze than anything else, so different from the happy laughter Anya had caused a mere minute or two ago. “One June, when I was ten, there was a parade in Petersburg. I heard someone say it was the three-hundredth anniversary of Romanov rule, but...who knows how accurate that was.” He tried for a grin, but all that manifested was the twitchings of a grimace. He was too uncomfortable for anything else. “The crowd was...huge. More people than I’d ever seen gathered in one place: thousands. But there was a girl there. She must’ve just been eight, then, but she carried herself as if she were a queen already. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I don’t know why, what compelled me towards her, but I ran through the crowd, past the guards to the foot of her carriage, calling her name. She looked at me and—”

Here, he faltered. If he told Anya what had really happened that day, she might start to get ideas. Ideas that weren’t fair of him to give her; it wouldn’t be fair to either of them. “She smiled, and it was the brightest thing I’d ever seen.” Dmitry didn’t tell her that was because it was the first time he’d seen color. He didn’t say that, when he thought of blue, he thought not of the sky but her eyes, and when he thought of red, it was not the flag of Russia that flew in his mind but her lips, curled and shining bright on a summer afternoon. “I couldn’t help but bow.”

“You’re making me feel I was there too,” Anya said, finally. She sounded just slightly breathless, and her voice jolted Dmitry out of his memories of that long-ago day. The smile he brought to his face was more convincing than the last time he’d tried, but only just.

“Maybe you were.” He laughed to ease the pain in his chest. “Make it part of your story.” The bow and the flamboyant gesture that accompanied his words were both just ways to hide the anguish inching across his face. When he straightened back up, it was gone, his expression fixed in a mask of encouragement once again.

She spoke hesitantly at first, eyes flicking back to Dmitry. “There was a parade…we were…passing by?” She looked at him for confirmation, but all he could do was nod, not trusting himself to speak. “It was hot, one of those, um, cloudless summer days, and Olga was…” Anya frowned, getting that far-away look that she’d had a few times before. Her voice strengthened. “Olga was telling me to lean back into the carriage, sit up straight, and keep my eyes ahead. But I couldn’t: there was a boy running alongside us, calling my name over and over. He was thin, dirty, but his _voice_. I tried to keep from smiling, but I couldn’t.”

Dmitry ducked his head, half-grinning at her imagination, half…something else. Something he couldn’t name even if he wanted to. He rose, ready to cut her off and declare this exercise over with, but Anya wasn’t done.

Her face was etched with wonder as she turned to look at him. “When our eyes met, the world burst into color.”

He was unable to keep his stomach and jaw from dropping. “I didn’t tell you that,” he managed to say, words barely audible over the frantic drumming of his heart.

Anya stood to meet him, hands trembling, cheeks straining from the weight of her smile. “You didn’t have to. I remember!”

Dmitry could say nothing, his breath stolen from him completely. “I…you…Anastasia?”

She nodded, throwing her arms out in elation. “I must be! Mustn’t I? If you…and if _I_ …if _we_ —” She drew back in on herself, looking suddenly nervous. “Dmitry…are you alright?”

He blinked, taken aback. It took a second, long and staring, for him to find the air to say something. “What?”

“You haven’t said anything.” Her fingers bit into the skin of her crossed arms, and he followed the movement with his eyes. The clear anxiety of it pushed words, near-thoughtless except in their intent to comfort, from his lips.

He forced a laugh from his lungs and ran a hand through his hair. “Yes! Yes, I’m wonderful! I just...I never thought I’d see you again.” Dmitry stepped towards her, closer than he’d been even when they were dancing together in St. Petersburg. His hand floated, dreamlike, towards Anya’s cheek. No. No, not Anya: Anastasia, Grand Duchess of All of Russia.

As quickly as he’d approached her, he faltered, yanking his hand away and backpedaling. There was no place for him in her world; not even soulmates could transcend the division that was soon to run between them. By this time tomorrow, they would be standing on opposite sides of a yawning canyon with no way across. He was just saving her the hardship of trying to traverse it. Knees trembling slightly, he knelt and looked up at her. Their eyes caught each other like magnets, and, remarkably, the objects in his peripheral vision seemed to glow. Dark as it was, something was making the colors more saturated, brighter than they would be even in daylight. With a heavy feeling, he knew why: Anastasia, it was always her. The princess’s eyes were wet but searing, a jumble of questions that he couldn’t, wouldn’t know how to, answer. Dmitry had no choice but to wrench his gaze away, focusing on the floor. “Your Highness.”

Tomorrow, he would get his reward, more money than he’d ever seen in his whole life, and Anastasia would go back to her nice, _safe_ life of wealth: without him, as it should be. He kept his eyes on a grain of wood until her feet disappeared from view. Dmitry couldn't help but notice how they trembled, their tread heavy and hesitating, as she left the room. In the too-full vacuum of her absence, the air seemed to hang full of silent aspirations, but they remained, moment after moment, unfulfilled. Unable to support his shaking legs any longer, Dmitry collapsed forward onto his hands and let out a long exhale. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, this would all be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this! Comments and kudos are appreciated!


End file.
